But How Do We Love?

“A new command I give you:  Love one another.   As I have loved you, so you must love one another.  By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”   John 13:34-35 (NIV)

I am convinced that the world recognizes love and responds to it.  At the Last Supper, Jesus told His disciples to love one another as He loved them.  Later, Paul describes the love that Jesus showed and that He expects us to show as well.  In 1 Corinthians 13:4-7, he says:  “Love is patient; love is kind.  Love isn’t envious, doesn’t boast, brag or strut about.  There’s no arrogance in love; it’s never crude, or indecent—it’s not self-absorbed.  Love isn’t easily upset.  Love doesn’t tally wrongs or celebrate injustice; but truth—yes, truth—is love’s delight.  Love puts up with anything and everything that comes along; it trusts, hopes, and endures no matter what.”  (VOICE)   All of that really sounds difficult.   Well, it is, but Jesus told His disciples to love as He had loved them, and Jesus’s love is perfect love.  

I knows that I can’t live up to that kind of love all the time, or even most of the time, but I can count on Jesus doing so and forgiving me when I don’t measure up.  How do I stack up against Paul’s definition of love?  

My lack of patience and kindness often shows up when I am driving.   It’s easy for me to be envious when I see someone pick up a package of steak, and I look at the price.  I do brag about my three sons, but I don’t think I strut.  Arrogance is something that I don’t recognize in myself until I stop and think about my pride in my accomplishments.  I try not to be rude, or crude, or indecent, but I’m sure that I am sometimes.  It is easy for me to become absorbed in what I am doing and forget about the rest of the world.  Again, traffic, easily upsets me, but I try not to be pleased when I catch up to the person who cut me off at the next light.  Injustice is not something I approve of, but some truths are hard to accept.  No, I don’t put up easily with everything that comes my way, but I do trust and hope in my Lord, and with His help I will endure until I meet Him face to face.

So, I guess I don’t fulfill everything Jesus expects of me in love, and I ask for His forgiveness, knowing that He has taken these sins of mine to hell and left them there.  Thank you, Jesus.

So, ask yourself how well you measure up to Paul’s definition of love. 

God Is Love

“Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.”  1John 4:8 (NIV)

God loves us.  He always has, and He always will.  He showed His love at creation.  He showed His love throughout the Old Testament.  He showed His love as told in the Gospels.  He showed His love at Calvary, and demonstrated His love in power at the resurrection.  His Word speaks of His love in the Epistles.  He speaks His love every day if we will take the time to pray and listen for Him while we pray.

Paul states in most eloquent terms in Romans 8:35-40 of God’s desire to keep us close to Him.  “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?  Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?  As it is written, ‘For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.’  No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.  For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nsr the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”  These verses can be shortened to “Nothing in all of creation can keep God from loving us.”  But the listing of all the possible things that might keep us from the love of God calls our attention to the magnitude of God’s love for us.

We all have trouble in life, but that can’t keep us from the love of God.   Hardships are a part of everyday life, but they can’t keep us from God’s love.  I haven’t suffered from famine, and I’ve always had clothes to wear, but Paul tells us that they can’t keep us from experiencing the love of God.  I’ve never been in the military or police service where I’ve faced danger or today’s “swords,” guns, but I have been told and have read that “there are no atheists in foxholes.”  There are people today, yes even today, who are facing danger and death because of their belief in our great God.  I stand in awe of those who have said in the face of these extreme dangers, “I will not renounce my faith in Jesus Christ.”  

Paul is convinced that God’s love will not be kept from us by either death or life.  Neither will spiritual beings, angels or demons, keep God’s love from us.  Today won’t, tomorrow won’t, and no power can come between us and the love of God.  No mountain is tall enough, and no ocean is deep enough to block God’s love.   No, nothing in creation can separate us from the love of God.  We are His, and He will love us forever.

I’m certain you noticed that I repeated every problem mentioned in Romans 8:35-40 in the precedng paragraph, and you may have found that to be repetitious.   Let’s look at it from God’s perspective.   How many times has he had to help us through problems and hardships.  I know that it has been many, many times in my life.  I’m so glad that He doesn’t say, “I’ve helped you with that problem once, that’s it.”  He’s not a “one and done” God when it comes to helping us with our daily lives.  The fact of the faithfulness of His love, no, the TRUTH of the faithfulness of His love resounds through the centuries.   

What does God expect from us in return?  A Pharisee once asked Jesus about this in Matthew 22:36  (NIV), “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the law?”  Jesus answered, in verses 37 to 40:  “Jesus replied, ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.  This is the first and greatest commandment.  And the second is like it:  Love your neighbor as yourself.  All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.’”  God created us, and that gives Him the right to ask that we love Him, but He expects us to expand our love to our neighbors and love the people He loves.

 

Come back next time for a deeper dive into God’s love and our response to it

Behold

“Behold, we go up to Jerusalem; and the Son of man shall be betrayed unto the chief priests and unto the scribes, and they shall condemn him to death, And shall deliver him to the Gentiles to mock, and to scourge, and to crucify him:  and the third day he shall rise again.”  Matthew 20:18,19 (KJV) 

Jesus announced to His disciples the things that were to come, the reason for which He had been sent to earth.  I imagine that there was a time of complete silence as soon as He spoke these words.  It had to have been depressing news until He got to the last six words, “…third day he shall rise again.”  Even though it ended on a promise of His rising from death, there was a lot of adversity included.  Jesus had told them previously that He would lose His life, but now He made it sound imminent.

Little did they know that it would begin with Jesus being proclaimed to be the Messiah by the people during His entrance into Jerusalem.  It was foretold in Zechariah 9:9 (KJV); “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout O daughter of Jerusalem:  behold, thy King cometh unto thee:  he is just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass.”  This was to be the beginning of a tumultuous week for Jesus and His disciples.

The end was revealed  by an angel to two women who had come to Jesus’ grave to anoint His body.  In Mark 16:6 (KJV), the angel spoke the words of joy that Jesus told them to expect; “And he saith unto them, ‘Be not affrighted:   Ye seek Jesus of Nazareth, which was crucified:  he is risen; he is not here:  behold the place where they laid him.’”  It had occurred as Jesus had said it would—He was alive.  He had risen from the grave!

Jesus speaks to us today in Revelation 22:12,13 (KJV):  “And. Behold, I come quickly; and my reward is with me, to give every man according as his work shall be.  I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last.”   Behold, the King has come and He is coming back.  There will be no mistaking Him this time.  He is coming back to reign for eternity with us as subjects of His glorious kingdom.  Praise be to God!    

Behold

“While he yet spake, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them:  and behold a voice out of the cloud, which said, ’This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye him.’”  Matthew 17:5 (KJV)

Jesus took Peter, James, and John up to a mountain to be alone with them.   When they arrived on the mountain, Jesus’ face shined like the sun, and Moses and Elijah appeared with Jesus.   Peter, being overwhelmed, asked if he could build “tabernacles” for each of them.  But God the Father interrupted Peter and spoke one of the great “beholds,” attesting to what Jesus had told them, that he was the actual Son of God, and, furthermore, proclaiming that He was well pleased with Jesus.  And then He spoke the words, “…hear ye him.”  Those words resound through the centuries to us today.  Paraphrased, the Father said to us:  “Hear Jesus; listen to what He said as recorded in Scripture,” and, “Listen to what He says when you pray.”  If Peter, James, and John were to listen to Jesus, shouldn’t we all.  If we were to listen as well as they did, revival would happen NOW!

In John 1:29 (KJV), John the Baptist said, “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.”  He said that as he saw Jesus passing by.  John was born to be the one who “introduced” Jesus to the people of Israel.   He began to do that in answer to the Pharisees when they asked if He claimed to be the Christ or Elijah.  He answered them in John 1:26,27 (KJV):  …”I baptize with water:  but there standeth one among you, whom ye know not; He it is who coming after me is preferred before me, whose shoe’s latchet I am not worthy to unloose.”   In verse 34 He said, “And I saw, and bare record that this is the Son of God.”   John spoke it clearly and plainly, just as we should.  Jesus is the Son of God, the only means of salvation for all who want to be saved from sin, death, and hellfire. 

In 2 Corinthians 3:15-18, Paul tells us:  “But even unto this day, when Moses is read, the veil is upon their heart.  Nevertheless when it shall turn to the Lord, the veil shall be taken away.  Now the Lord is the Spirit:  and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.  But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.”  When we look upon Jesus and see Him face to face, we shall grow to become more and more like Him every day.   But meantime, we need to study His life and spend precious time in prayer in order to reflect His goodness and glory to those we meet, thereby drawing them to Him.  Our assigned task here on earth is, by word and deed, to bring others to a saving knowledge of Him.

Let us “behold” to many that Jesus Christ is Lord!      

Behold

“Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.” Isaiah 7:14   (KJV)

What an astounding “Behold” that was.   Virgins do not conceive, and the scripture does not tell how the virgin would conceive.  The other astounding part of this “Behold” was the name she was to call him, “Immanuel.”   “Immanuel” meant “God with us” to Israel, so they were being assured that their God, Jehovah, was with them and would be with them.  They would not be swept away.  No matter what the struggle, even if it were as a mighty river, Israel would be preserved.   

Centuries later several more “beholds” would not only shed light on this passage of scripture, they would announce the actual appearance of this Emmanuel child.  First, a young woman, a virgin, was espoused but not yet married, so a child was not to be expected.  She was visited by an angel that gave her a startling message from God.  We find it in Luke 1:28-31, “And the angel come in unto her, and said, ‘Hail, thou that art highly favored, the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou among women.’  And when she saw him, she was troubled at his saying, and cast in her mind what manner of salutation this should be.  And the angel said unto her, ‘ Fear not, Mary:  for thou hast found favor with God.  And, “behold,” thou shalt conceive in thy womb and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name JESUS.  He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest:  and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father, David.’”  Mary explained the impossibility of this because she “knew not a man.”  The angel explained that the Holy Ghost would come over her and cause the conception.  Wow, what a thing for a young teenage girl to hear.  She kept this conversation secret for a while.

Mary’s husband-to-be was concerned about this unexpected pregnancy but wasn’t sure what he should do when he got a surprise visit from an angel.   Matthew 1:20-21 relates this conversation, “But while he thought on these things, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying, ‘Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife:  for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost.  And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name JESUS:  for he shall save his people from their sins.’”   Okay, now we have two quite amazed people.

We have one more “behold” to discover.  This one occurred months later and was given to individuals who had no connection at all to Mary and Joseph.  This “behold’ was given to a group of shepherds.  They, too, were surprised as an angel appeared to them out in the fields.  Luke 2:10-11 relates the report:  “And the angel said unto them, ‘Fear not; for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.  For unto you is born this day in the city of David, A Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.’”   

Three “beholds,” one to a young girl, one to a perplexed husband-to-be, and one to anonymous shepherds that announced the arrival of the Savior of the World.  There is never been a more important announcement than this, and it was given to relatively unknown and “unimportant” people.  I believe that this indicates that our Savior, Jesus Chist, came to serve and to save.  He will come later to reign.  Behold, the King is coming.  What a great “behold” that will be.